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Oliver Deutschmann, who operates the Berlin-based Vidab label along with Stephan Hill, specializes in what he calls “timeless” club music – while it’s a term that initially seems like it could apply to anything and everything, a quick survey of Deutschmann’s work makes it readily apparent what he means. His hard-edged beats, insistent tones, and occasional flash of devious humor make Deutschmann a natural addition to the Mote-Evolver roster: his natural versatility and clear-minded futurism result in compelling club tracks and DJ nights, and his Mote Evolver debut EP Lost In A Loop is no exception to this rule. With just a simple schematic to work with, Deutschmann does what the best producers do and enlivens those simple instructions until they give an illusion of greater complexity.

Deutschmann’s deft usage of split-second samples on the opening track “Seduced” turns a distant, repeated murmur of the track title into an inescapable command, while a dense undergrowth of acid bassline makes it clear there’s no turning back. The interlude “Apsurt” follows with lofty, faintly ominous synth pads providing the backing to a glass elevator ride to the top of a skyscraper utopia, all while a reassuring monologue on neurology points towards a future of human connectivity. The tension between the dark-tinted instrumentation and these utopian pronouncements is a classic techno trope that Deutschmann employs to great effect.

On the b-side, “Survive” plays out very much like the more intense and anxious twin of “Seduced,” again relying on the repeitition of a single reverberating word to set the tone, while the hammering drum patterns fill in the details. The closer “Lost” dispenses with the vocalisations completely and lets the steaming mechanical processes take center stage: the stripped-down symbiosis of body and brain that this track achieves is very rperesnetative of Deutschmann’s work overall.

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The working relationship between producer Psyk (a.k.a. Manuel Anós) and Mote-Evolver continues with the new Silent Witness EP, another episode showcasing Psyk’s expert balance of technical variance and affective consistency.

The EP title brings to mind the kind of frozen state of awe that accompanies intense, revelatory experiences of all kinds, and the careful build-up of each individual track here allows plenty of room for such a state to come about. Put another way, Psyk’s simple but dense constructions rise and fall with a perfect, patient arcing motion that make the music feel very much like a first contact with some uncanny new form of intelligence. “Disorder,” for example, leads in with a curiosity-provoking combo of rubbery kick drum and gated synth sounds that seem like sonic accompaniment for observing the conduction of electricity across neuronal pathways. Its gradual intensification, via shivering and cleanly spaced cymbal accents and writhing / restless synth drone, acts like a microscope onto equally colorful imagined scenarios. The title track follows on this with a similar tempo and probing mood, but this time with sharper rhythmic edges, crisp hi-hats and swells that rise like mist over a darkened body of water.

“Apart” inaugurates the B-side with a classic club sound; one reliant on chaining together micro-snippets of sound into something epic and expansive. As with the previous two cuts, a master tone glides over this assemblage of tiny machines and sees that it reaches a satisfying conclusion. “Surrender” then ends this particular voyage with a vertiginous, omnipresent sequence guiding the way through a synthetic wilderness where chromed mandibles clack together and where hallucinated alert sounds lend an air of lurking danger.

Longtime fans of Psyk will find Silent Witness to be a very worthy addition to his catalogue, and also a worhty addition to any DJ sets that desire to mix raw energy with a carefully tailored sense of sophistication.

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Since 2006, the Deep Heet series of recordings has shown the public an especially distinctive side of the production work of Planetary Assault Systems. With a unique ‘engine room’ ambience and a focus upon maintaining a continual surge of pure energy, each volume in the Deep Heet collection has lived up to that title, subtly suggesting the kind of sustained and voluntary temperature rise that has traditionally given way to spiritual or visionary experiences. Just check out tracks such as “Flat Tire” from Volume 3, with its hard percussive edge accompanied by a pervasive hiss like boiling matter changing into gas. P.A.S. helmsman Luke Slater also thinks highly enough of this series to re-work tracks like “Whistle Viper” in recent live sets, or to offer up others (e.g. “Raid”) for remixing by Mote-Evolver allies.

It’s only appropriate, then, that the 50th overall release on Mote-Evolver should also be the fourth overall volume of Deep Heet. In keeping with Slater’s recent forward-thinking self-assessments like the “Planetary Funk” anniversary series, this is simultaneously a summary of past successes and another new evolution in style and content. This new set of four highly concentrated cuts shows how effective Planetary Assault Systems can be at fueling the imagination by fusing together rhythmic and incidental elements into a unified, animated meshwork, without even a prominent melody to help out. For example, on the compelling track “Lazer Organical,” listeners will find themselves in the midst of a testing range where thick arcs of coherent plasma ricochet off of the walls.

Deep Heet Vol. 4 also showcases Slater’s aptitude for choosing just the right moments to deviate from a steady groove: on the mesmerizing bubblebath of “Random Kingdom,” he allows listeners to sink into the rising sonic foam before interjecting with some sharp metallic hits. The leadoff track “Desert Races” proceeds in similar fashion, weaving a web of luminous sequencer patterns around the listener before and cutting in with sudden fluctuations or distortions that function like a hypnotist’s suggestions after an entranced patient has become fully responsive. “Life Rhythm,” on the other hand, is a total immersion session in which Slater’s presence seems to recede into the background and listeners themselves may begin imagining overtones and sonic ephemera that weren’t programmed into the original track.

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The full dose of “Mesh” shows two producers clearly at their most focused and precise. Like their best work to date, it will get fans’ active imaginations churning – and leave them wondering what thiscollaboration has in store for the near future.

Roog Unit is the new production duo fusing together the talents of Luke Slater and Ø [Phase] a.k.a. Ashley Burchett, the music being the result of many months of discourse and growing connection. They have already joined forces in the recent past: Ø [Phase] contributed a striking remix of the Planetary Assault Systems classic “Dungeon” for the radical reassessment program “Planetary Funk: 22 Light Years,” and the two shared DJ duties during last year’s “22 Light Years” tour.

The apt title of the debut EP for Mote Evolver, “Mesh,” suggests a locked grid or set of axes on top of which all sorts of creative possibilities can be sketched out, and it provides a perfect descriptive metaphor for the interaction between these two skillful heads: like carefully interwoven strands, neither half of the duo dominates the proceedings and each individual’s contribution strengthens the effect of the other’s.

The self-titled leadoff track on “Mesh” is a bracing bombardment of the senses, pulling out all the stops in order to get ever closer to a white-hot core of intensity. This journey to the heart of the sun moves along at a rapid pace, but also with a sense of patience, as new sound elements fade in slowly and surely. Chugging bass sequences, metallic flutters and sparkling high-register arpeggiation all make this into a piece of contained chaos that will engage veteran listeners and certainly teach novices a thing or two.

Before the listener has fully caught his or her breath, “Bugeye” follows suit and proves that the winning formula of the previous track is no one-off affair. A characteristically high-impact percussive track forms the base from which Burchett and Slater implement their plans for layering sonic architecture. Here their experience and determination truly differentiate them from the pack – where others might pile on sounds into an indistinct and fatiguing audio mush, this pair overlaps numerous different tone colors without causing any of them to lose their individual character.

The flipside, “The Chains,” is a quintessential late night / early dawn number that leads listeners down subterranean corridors lined with beams of luminescent light and populated by smoke-shrouded men of mystery. On this cut, eerie shivering sonorities float in with all the classic drama of sustained Hammond organ chords; a bed of sound on top of which a cool vocal recitation encourages listeners that everything will be “all right” – although the tension between this laidback narration and the demanding straight-ahead trajectory of the music will allow listeners to make up their own minds on that score.

The full dose of “Mesh” shows two producers clearly at their most focused and precise. Like their best work to date, it will get fans’ active imaginations churning – and leave them wondering what this collaboration has in store for the near future.

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Having already unleashed a considerable amount of collaborative magic with the “Planetary Funk: 22 Light Years” series of remix EPs, Luke Slater has now upped the ante with six full sides’ worth of material, all of them injecting the spirit of classic P.A.S. into new sonic organisms. Using motifs from past P.A.S. successes, Luke Slater and his cohorts join here to make something radical and revitalizing: too cohesive for a “compilation album” and with too much autonomy granted to the guest remixers to be a simple “tribute,” this new LP is the boldest statement in the series yet.

Three of the tracks in the program are intense and captivating live re-workings from Slater himself, hurtling from the speakers with an apparent minimum of post-production polish and an optimal level of buzzing energy. The first of these, his new “Surface Noise” treatment, sends listeners wading through a dark pool of restlessly throbbing sound with a single buzz-tone as a beacon, adding new percussive fuel to keep the journey going just when it seems all will fade into enveloping darkness. “Tap Dance” brings a brighter sound set to the mix, but without forsaking the trademark steamrolling bass and the contrasting effect of gravity-resistant ephemeral sound clouds. The last reworking, “Whistle Viper,” caps off this ‘set-within-a-set’ in similar fashion.

While this on its own would make for a compelling listen, the album is also laden with contributions from an international assembly of electronic soul controllers (to wit: Marcel Fengler, Psyk, Lucy, Slam, Octave One, Function and KSP). Fengler kicks off the proceedings with an ecstatic and lustrous rework of “Twelve,” a melodic sunrise joining a synth pad massage to a locked-in and systematic rhythm. Psyk’s own interpretation of the same track preserves the same insistence but applies it to a completely different time and place, driving the listener through a wilderness of coded signals and an ambiguous repetition of the title that sounds like it could be as much a warning as an indicator of progress.

KSP’s version of “Function 6” gradually builds a cyborg leitmotif from an overdriven martial beat and epileptic machine breakdowns – a fascinating audio case study of perfect discipline disintegrating into something rather unexpected. Sequencing this with Octave One’s “Booster” rework is an ideal choice, as the squared-away EBM / electro-funk sequences and flanged hi-hats seem to refer to a different phase in the life cycle of the same machine. Function’s “Diesel Drudge,” on the other hand, moves from the machine world into a totally oneiric world typified by backwards-masked / time-traveling voices and a thick strobe-lit haze. Taking a cue from this atmosphere is Lucy’s re-envisioning of “Surface Noise”, in which he doubles down on the original’s feel of liquefied darkness to create a piece of endlessly vibrating sonic mesmerism, a no-nonsense tantric exercise in shedding preconceptions and inhibitions.